---
title: They saw a bothy far off, but, though far off, they were soon there. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They saw a bothy far off, but, though far off, they were soon there. Who acts: raven. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 33

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They saw a bothy far off, but, though far off, they were soon there.

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**Who acts:** raven · **What happens:** see, be · **To what, where:** bothy

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (raven), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg7885:31:33
# text = They saw a bothy far off, but, though far off, they were soon there.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	bothy	bothy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	far	far	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	6	advmod	_	_
6	off	off	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	though	though	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
11	far	far	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	12	advmod	_	_
12	off	off	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
15	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
16	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	17	advmod	_	_
17	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | past | raven | a bothy |  |  |  | off *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer bothy=Stimulus |
| 2 | **is** | past | raven |  |  |  |  | soon, there *property* | tree rules |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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